We’ve been in the trends and predictions business for a few decades now, and never have we seen a year kickoff the way 2025 has.
Back in January, we filed away a pretty good article, “10 Things to Watch in 2025,” written by Marq Burnett that appeared across the Boston Business Journal and its sister publications across the country.
We probably filed it (the old-fashioned way, in an actual paper file) because it contained some good trends that we hadn’t mentioned in our trends published Dec. 11, 2024.
While we discussed the pervasiveness of AI — which Burnett did, too — he mentioned interesting trends we missed like “The Shifting Pay Picture,” “Remote Work’s Last Stand,” “The Office Leasing Equation,” and others.
But the reason we’re citing his article today is that there are a couple of predictions that he got very wrong — and it’s not his fault.
In “Change in Washington,” Burnett cited industry experts saying that “several high-stakes changes are on the horizon in 2025.” Ah, if it were only several changes. We don’t usually tackle politics but we don’t see this as political: it’s hard to manage during chaos, particularly this much chaos. We’re not blaming Burnett for underestimating the breadth and speed of change while downplaying the disruption and chaos. It’s only April, there’s no end in sight, and no sense of when things might stabilize.
In his section entitled, “The Future of DEI,” Burnett quoted an industry executive as saying, “The name may change, but diversity, equity and inclusion work is here to stay.”
Unfortunately, that turned out to be wrong, too. We realize some companies are trying to keep the initiatives going under the radar and under a different name. But this is another example of disruption that few envisioned.
Our point is not to knock Burnett. It’s still a good article, and he’s right about more things than he’s wrong.
Our point really is for those trying to manage their business, and those of us trying to help them navigate and communicate those changes, it’s become a much bigger challenge than we thought in January.
It means that companies need to be much more agile and responsive internally, even if they don’t engage externally. But that brings about other issues. Even as the C-Suite considering new dangers brought about by rapid change, not responding to employees can be another issue. We’ve already seen people publicly quit because they disagree with the stance their organization is taking. What that means is that issuing no comments about the board’s view may be fiscally prudent but may anger employees who want the board to take a stand.
Our point is: It’s only April and communications’ role has become more important and more challenging.
